


the roads that lead us back

by banksoflochlomond



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU after the Force Awakens, All I'm saying is, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Poe Dameron, Force-Sensitive Trees, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Me to Myself: that's not how the force works, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, The Great and Magnificent Uneti, Trauma, get this: Poe IS a force-sensitive tree, if there's a force-sensitive tree in poe's backyard, listen they're really important for the plot, well kinda, why would it not fucking matter at all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:48:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22125106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banksoflochlomond/pseuds/banksoflochlomond
Summary: “Are you saying I’m a tree? Just to be clear,” Poe calls out to her, squinting his eyes.“I’m saying you’re like a tree,” General Organa says, poking her head back into the room. “Follow along, and don’t be slow, I’ve got another council session in about an hour. Tea, or no?”“I’m a tree,” Poe repeats, dumbfounded.“A very special tree,” the General says, and oh, she’s just taking the piss out of him now. “I bet if you concentrated hard enough, you could photosynthesize.”
Relationships: Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey, Poe Dameron & Leia Organa, Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 19
Kudos: 129





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So you may be wondering why I am writing this.
> 
> Unfortunately, that is an answer I'm still searching for. On that note, if you have any leads, there's a cash prize involved.

Poe knows that the General knows, when he finally makes it back to base.

He focuses on the escape, when asked about his capture. Talks about the daring Stormtrooper acting all alone, about how he didn’t even have a name, about flying a TIE fighter for the first time. He gloats especially about that last part to his squadron, mainly to avoid talking about the Stormtrooper’s (Finn, his name had been Finn for five minutes and then he’d died right after being named) death.

So he talks about the TIE fighter to avoid talking about Finn’s death, and he talks about the escape to avoid talking about the capture. But the General knows, because she always knows about Poe. She’d shown up at his family home when he was five years old and leveled him with a look and had known everything about him in that moment, and it’s never been any different since then.

When he finally gets around to completing his debriefing, the General invites him back to her quarters quietly, and it’s not an order but Poe knows he can’t really say no. Not to Leia.

They sit down at her little dining table and she boils water for tea, and casually, like she could be discussing D’Qar’s weather or the newest reports on training exercises for the new recruits, she says, “If I had known, I would have never sent you on the mission.”

Poe likes to pretend he knows what the General means, and a lot of the times he’s right. This specific time, however, Poe just slouches down deeper into his seat, and says, “Do you mean about Ren being there, or about…”

He can’t even begin to say the other thing, even though it roils in him, popping and bursting at strange intervals, just like the General’s simmering pot of water. He swallows, and tries to push it down. 

“Both, I suppose,” she says, and she folds her hands on top of one another. She’s still standing in her kitchenette, and from Poe’s angle from the dining table, he almost misses her start to pick at the skin on her hands. The smallest tell, but the only one the General has. She always begins again, whenever someone brings up Ren. Last time they’d had a meeting about him, the General had torn tiny, crescent-shaped cuts into her palms.

Poe knows he doesn’t look great. Shadows setting into his face, and when he’d looked into a mirror, his hair hung down limp in front of face, and he had a strange edge to his eyes. Wilder than they should be.

But for the first time, Poe wonders what he must be to the General. If he pulses and throbs to her, like the open wound he feels like. Worse, he wonders if she can feel Ren in him. The stench of him, the shadows of his rage still lurking in the corners of Poe’s thoughts. For a while, and even in the TIE fighter for a few moments, Poe couldn’t tell where he started and Ren ended within his own mind.

“I’ve never been good at these things,” Leia admits, pulling her hands away from each other as the kettle begins to whistle. She pours the water into two mugs, dunks in teabags and makes her way back to the dining table. She hands Poe the mug with two teabags, because he likes his tea strong and bitter. “Telling whether someone is Force-sensitive. I didn’t really even know I was myself, until Luke told me. I tell myself I did, or that I was distracted because there was a war going on...but I also missed...other things. It’s better that I wasn’t the Jedi in the family, I suppose.”

She almost smiles, but it’s a quirk of a lip more than anything else. Poe blows the steam away from his tea, and plays with the tag on one of the teabags.

He doesn’t really know what to say, is the problem. His mind is so scrambled, so jagged because of--because of Kylo Ren, and he can’t seem to clamp down on the storm brewing, a feeling that’s hot and messy and soupy and centered to the right of his heart, somehow. 

He closes his eyes, and takes a few deep breaths. Something sizzles within him again, and he groans, pushes at it, pushes it away, tries to get it away from _him._

With a shriek, the aluminum kettle still sitting on the stovetop scrapes across the stovetop and hurls itself against the opposite wall. 

“Shit,” Poe breathes out, and squeezes at his mug tightly with white knuckles.

“...Huh,” the General says, turning around to look at the kettle. There’s now a sizable dent in its side, and it lays pathetically on the floor, leaking out excess water through its spout. 

“I--I didn’t mean to do that, I--” Poe swallows, and bites at his cheek. “If you need to ground me, or. Take me out of command, I get it, General.”

She’s still staring at the kettle. “That wasn’t you,” she says, quietly, and Poe’s heart stops.

“You don’t mean that Kylo Ren...he’s not _inside_ me, still,” Poe says, and oh, there’s his heart again, jackrabbiting out a new, too-fast pace. It beats too fast, and with the searing heat still in his chest, he can feel a sweat breaking out across his skin. He sucks in a deep breath, tells himself to calm down, but he can’t seem to. He feels it again, all at once. Ren, pulling apart his mind, ripping it at the seams, sending everything astray. He’d lost when he’d forgotten what he was even trying to _protect._

“No,” Leia says, and suddenly she’s gripping onto his hands, still wrapped around the mug. Poe looks up to meet her eyes, dark as Ren’s but steady, kinder, and suddenly the comparison doesn’t even seem fair.

“Stars, Poe, he isn’t here right now,” Leia says, but then she hesitates. “But when you--when the kettle moved...it wasn’t moved with, ah.”

Poe stares at her. She sits back, letting go of his hands, and instead presses a palm to the side of her face, near her temple. “I can’t sense any hatred, any anger from _you_ ,” she says. “I know I couldn’t sense your Force-sensitivity, but now that I can, you feel--strange. I wonder…”

“General,” Poe says. “It was the dark side of the Force, wasn’t it.” He jerks his head over to the kettle. His hands are trembling around his mug of tea.

“Yes,” she says, because even though she was sketching around the issue, Poe had asked a direct question, and she would always answer those. “But, Poe,” she says, quickly, “I’m not entirely sure, but I think that you have something a bit different from Force-sensitivity.”

Poe blinks. “I can feel it,” he says, the words falling out of his mouth. He pushes a hand against his chest. “Here,” he says, “And it’s not--it’s not _good,_ I hate it, it’s so...hot, and it feels like it’s bubbling.”

“That’s not how the Force usually works, Poe,”the General says, like it’s proving her point somehow. She finally takes a sip of her tea, and Poe feels the heat pool in his chest again, uncomfortable. He shifts around, but doesn’t dare try and push it out again. 

The General seems...well, not confused, but like she’s thinking through something. She takes another sip of tea, and Poe becomes suddenly sure that she’s stalling for time. Worse, he thinks she may be trying to find a way out of this. A way that makes sure that Poe hasn’t been twisted, pulled toward the dark side, but Poe can feel it in his chest, in his cracked-open mind. He’s sure he’s bleeding it out into the world, infecting everything, radiating the same heat and terrible hurt that Kylo Ren does. Shit, he’s not ever gonna be able to fly again, he can’t fucking fly like this, can’t joke around with Jessika or rib at Snap, not when he’s a boiling-over mess, not when everything around him is in danger of being abused or Force-choked, shit--

He gasps as the General grabs onto his hands again, and he recoils without meaning to, the warmth and size of her hands matching Ren’s. She smiles as he takes deep breaths, refocuses, but it’s not a good smile.

“Poe,” she says sternly, “Listen to me. The dark side that you’re feeling right now isn’t you.”

“You can’t know that,” Poe says quietly. “You don’t know the things that he--he ruined, that he pulled at and pushed into me. I don’t think I can control all this.”

“Perhaps I should have been more specific,” the General says, and she stands up from the table to pick up the stupid kettle. Its dent is so large and bashed-in, but she only pours out the little bit of water left inside and sets it onto the counter, where it always is. Like there’s not a considerable amount of damage done to it. 

“The dark side you’re feeling,” she explains, turning to face Poe with a gentle, hardened expression, “literally isn’t you, Poe. You can’t control it, because it isn’t yours to control.”

Poe blinks. “What?”

***

Even though it had only been a cutting when Shara Bey planted the Force-sensitive tree in the garden, by the time that Poe was a small child, it had already shot up, tall and proud, and thick around the trunk and boughs, unlike most saplings. Sturdy enough for Poe to climb on and play in, but not too tall as to discourage Poe from clambering up, or for his parents to stop him from it.

In Poe’s memories, the tree, which his mom and dad said was called an Uneti, felt warm and safe. Sometimes, when he’d had a bad nightmare, he’d go out to the backyard and sit under it, looking up at its blue foliage and breathing deep until he’d forgotten what he’d dreamt of.

Once, on one of these nights, he’d fallen asleep against the trunk, and he’d had a strange dream.

Not a bad one, he remembered that much. And it had faded over the years, becoming impressions and blurs of colors more than stark images and conversations. But there had been a man with piercing, kind dark eyes, and a woman who crackled with power, and the exhilaration of moving so fast through the air that it whistled around him, cold and gusty but freeing somehow. When he’d woken up the next morning with his dad smiling down at him, Poe hadn’t felt comforted, exactly, but he’d felt directed. Like a compass always pointing him toward his true north. It was the first time the thought had really crystallized in his mind, had felt right: Poe Dameron wanted to be a pilot.

He’d always considered that revelation, that odd little dream, to be a message from the tree. It was an old saying on Yavin IV, that the Force works hand-in-hand with fate to deliver destiny. Poe always thought that the dream was a gift, of sorts, from the Force. The only one he’d ever received.

***

It was, in fact, a gift from the Force.

It just wasn’t the only one.

***

The General tries to explain it as they head out onto one of the abandoned airstrips, but it’s clear that even she is unsure about the whole thing. 

“So you’re saying I’m not actually Force-sensitive?” Poe asks skeptically, because, well. Kylo Ren and the heat swallowing up his insides at the moment kind of beg to fucking differ.

“No, you are,” the General says, “Otherwise Ren wouldn’t have gone so far. He could sense that something was different with you, and he dug deep to try and figure it out and try and twist it to his benefit.”

Poe swallows hard, and the General looks sideways at him. “He didn’t succeed, Poe,” she says, and Poe just shakes his head, rolls his shoulders back. 

“So why are we out here?” Poe asks, examining the cracked tarmac. The Resistance’s resources have been limited, and ever since some awry missions, they’ve had less aircraft to operate with. There are plenty of airstrips near the base, just like this one, that have fallen into disrepair as a result.

“What you feel, right now, is what I believe to be remnants of Ren’s power from torture,” the General says, clipped and straightforward, not even pausing on Ren’s name or on the word ‘torture.’ “I also believe that you can expel that power from yourself, much like with the kettle back in my quarters.”

Poe frowns. “Are you sure? It doesn’t seem like the Force works that way.”

The General just looks at him, which is the closest thing to an ‘I have no idea’ that he’ll ever get from her. “Just try, Dameron,” she says, and Poe sighs, but stands up straighter anyway.

He closes his eyes, because it feels like the right thing to do, and pulls at the heat in his chest, tries to push it out again. It doesn’t budge, but snaps inside of him even more, he swallows, bends over without realizing it, bending a knee and a hand to the pavement of the tarmac, and _pushes._

He feels it burst out of him like a firecracker, exploding in the atmosphere above them. He thinks he hears Leia gasp from above him, but he’s too busy pulling more and more at the reserves, exhaling in relief as it all snaps out of him, cracking into the earth and sky in equal measure. The pavement splits underneath him, and his fingers curl into fists, and he keeps pulling at the heat in his chest until there’s nothing else there.

When Poe opens his eyes, he sees nothing but red for a moment.

Then it clears, and he sees General Organa, staring back at him. And the destruction around them.

Chunks of pavement have been pulled up from the tarmac, blown as far as fifty yards away across the fields surrounding it. Poe’s hand is covered in soot, and so is a lot of the spiderwebbed, ruined tarmac around him. A few of the trees are burning with the last embers of a wildfire, others blown over or split down the middle, spraying splinters everywhere. Much of the undergrowth that had surrounded the airfield seems to have disintegrated. Dark, angry clouds have gathered above them, grey and grumbling and Poe swallows and struggles to his feet, suddenly feeling tired, woozy. Even though the heat is gone from his chest, now, he still feels the effects of Kylo Ren in his brain. Like a library whose bookshelves have been overturned. 

The General, miraculously unharmed by it all, grabs onto Poe’s shoulders. “You all right?” she asks.

“Sorry,” Poe says, trying not to sway. He rubs at his face. “I know that...probably wasn’t pleasant to watch.”

“Do you still feel the dark side of the Force?” General Organa asks him.

Poe prods around a bit inside of himself. “No,” he says, shoulders sagging in relief this time. “Shit, I really thought he’d--that I...oh, fuck.”

Poe scrubs another hand across his face, and it’s definitely not to stop any potential tears from welling up. Nothing like that at all.

General Organa, because she is a fantastic woman, does not comment on it. Instead, she says, “We’ll figure all this out, and what it means, Commander Dameron. I promise you. Until then, I think it’s best to keep you grounded, after all you’ve experienced from this last mission.”

“Of course, General Organa,” Poe says. Normally he’d argue, but he knows she’s right about this. Poe is nowhere close to being ready to fly again. Not until he can get Ren out of his head. 

***

That plan lasts maybe half of a day, of course.

They get the lead about Takodana, about BB-8, and Poe knows he has to go with his squadron. He’s got to complete the fucking mission that he nearly lost his sanity for. That he lost Finn for.

As soon as the word reaches Poe, he races to meet the General, flight suit already half-pulled on, the sleeves tied around his waist and helmet shoved under his arm. She sighs when she sees him.

“I thought, for once, we were in agreement, Commander,” the General says.

“You called it my last mission,” Poe says, the plan only half-formed in his head. “But technically, this is still the same mission. So I should help, because this is still my mission.”

“It’s good you’ve never had to argue for a legal case, Dameron,” the General says. “There’s no stopping you, is there.”

It’s phrased as a question, but they both know it isn’t one. Poe shrugs. “I’ll be careful,” he says.

“If you see Ren, I want you to turn the opposite direction,” the General says, and holds her hand up as Poe starts to open his mouth. “This is an order, Dameron, and I know you have trouble following those, but you need to _listen._ If you are to fly out with your squadron, you must follow this order. We are not sure what Ren wants with you, and I fear for both your safety and the safety of others if you are captured. Do you understand.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Poe says, and immediately begins to untie the sleeves of his flight suit.

The General just shakes her head, mutters something about having too much of a soft spot for reckless ace pilots, and runs off, presumably to strong-arm a Senator or scare the wits out of some poor Resistance fighter.

***

Poe had asked his mom about the tree a few times, over the years.

A Force-sensitive tree was a very rare thing. As in, they still weren’t sure if there were more than the one in Poe’s backyard and Luke Skywalker’s own cutting.

Poe had asked his mom, once, why the tree was Force-sensitive. His mom had tilted her head to the side, and said, “Some things have reason for being as they are, Poe, and some people have that, too. And sometimes, things are the way they are, and that’s just as important. Destiny matters, little one, but so does life.

Poe had tilted his head to the side, just as his mom had, and said, “So you don’t know why the tree’s Force-sensitive?”

“Nope,” she said cheerfully, and ran a hand through his hair. “It was important to Luke, though, so I take care of it as best I can.”

Another time, he’d asked her why the tree had mattered so much to the Jedi, and if there’d been any more Force-sensitive plants.

“I don’t know about the plants,” his mom had said, tapping a hand on the table. His father was preparing dinner, and she was reading some dog-eared fiction book, reading out interesting bits to Poe and his dad. “The Uneti, though--Luke told me that it symbolized a true connection to the Force. He’d said something about the fact that it can’t manipulate the Force, so it becomes a conduit for it. A conduit’s like a connecting thing, Poe. Because the Uneti is tied to the Force, it’s important for the Jedi, because the Jedi always want a deeper connection with the Force, too.”

“I heard a myth about it, once,” his dad added, stirring around grain and vegetables in a wide, shallow pan. “Or maybe a fable. It was about a traveler who favored the dark side of the Force. He tried to cut down an Uneti, but because the Uneti could understand the Force better than any dark side user, it was able to deflect the attacks back to the traveler himself, and he was defeated by his own power.”

“Could our tree do that?” Poe asked, looking up at his mom. “Protect us from bad people?”

“Maybe,” his mom said, but she’d smiled at him anyway. “And anyway, your dad and I will always protect you no matter what, mijo.”

Poe had nodded, eyes already straying back to the tree in their backyard, how it glowed and seemed to pulse in time with the very heart of Yavin IV.

Sometimes, when he played in the tree, he’d close his eyes and pretend he could feel all the same things their Uneti did.

***

Everything else happens so quickly, Poe nearly forgets about his new Force thing.

He remembers seeing Finn again and almost worrying he’s a ghost, there’s no way he’s here, except he _is_ and he’s wearing Poe’s jacket like it was made for him, and suddenly they’re hatching a plan to break some girl out of a new Death Star and destroy the whole base and hopefully a significant portion of the First Order along with it.

And then the aftermath of all of it: of seeing Finn again, and he wasn’t dead but near dead, smoke still curling up from him along with the scent of burning leather and the iron of blood as he gets rushed off to the infirmary. Of the girl, wild-eyed and chest heaving as she follows Finn until the surgery room door gets shut in her face, the lightsaber hilt still clutched in her hand. And, worst of all, the General: the heavy set to her shoulders, mouth downturned and eyes nearly glazed over, but still directing troops, drawing up plans, going to emergency meetings.

Sometimes, when Poe was feeling particularly maudlin (often after a lot of bourbon), he’d wonder how the General could keep going, despite everything her son had done. A few times, he’d wondered if the General would have what it takes to kill Kylo Ren. If Ren was so far gone that he’d be able to kill his own mother.

He knows the answer to one of those questions, now. And he knows, now, with a terrible certainty, how Leia keeps going: it’s because she knows she has to. She knows how much of a monster Ren has become, now more than ever, and she believes it’s her duty to put an end to it all.

So Poe doesn’t say anything to her at all, just salutes, and goes to Finn’s bedside as soon as he can, because he knows that’s where Rey will be.

“You know, I heard you’re our newest hope,” Poe says, tapping on the metal railing at the foot of Finn’s bed.

Rey looks up, and then around. Medical in the Resistance is chronically underfunded, like everything else on the base. As a result, there are few onsite beds, each separated by a flimsy, dark cotton curtain. She seems uneasy, shifting around on the seat next to Finn, so Poe says, “Only people overhearing us right now are either knocked out or medical personnel.”

It’s true enough. Rey hasn’t been listening to visiting hour times since Finn made it through surgery, and Poe has a high enough clearance to finagle his way into the infirmary after-hours. He’s purposely caught her at an off hour for this conversation.

Rey says, “You’re the pilot, aren’t you? The one that escaped with Finn.”

“That’s me,” Poe says. He figures she doesn’t do handshakes, so he just says, arms firmly attached to his sides, “Poe Dameron. And you’re Rey, aren’t you? Finn talked a lot about you.”

“Yes,” Rey says, and pointedly does not say anything else. She’s hunched over in the plastic chair next to Finn, tense as all hell. There’s a satchel next to her on the ground, and Poe would bet anything that it’s got Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber inside. He tries not to stare at the bag for too long.

Poe clears his throat instead, forces himself onward. “Everyone’s saying that you’re gonna find Luke Skywalker. Become a Jedi, and put an end to all of this.”

“Yes,” Rey says evenly, “I’ve heard that, too.” She doesn’t move.

“Are you going to?” Poe pushes.

Rey sits up, fixates on him. She’s got a young face, wide and flat, but her eyes--she’s sharp, Poe decides. Like barbed wire. He can see why she’s lasted so long as a scavenger.

Whatever Rey sees when she looks at him, really looks at him, must be all right. She sinks back down into the chair, still not breaking eye contact. It’s a bit unsettling. “I suppose I must,” Rey says. “If I’ve gone this far…”

She trails off, but Poe understands, maybe better than she does. He’s felt the same tug, the one that drew him to piloting, that seems to be pulling him toward her and Finn right now. Poe clears his throat, and Rey abruptly breaks eye contact, instead skirting her gaze back to Finn, prone and unmoving on the bed. Bacta-soaked bandages have been plastered to his back, but if Poe closes his eyes, he can still smell the burn and sizzle of Finn’s wound. He feels sick by it, and tries to ignore it, clearing his throat and standing up tall again.

“If that’s the case,” Poe says, “and you’re the one to defeat Kylo Ren...be forgiving with him. As forgiving as you can be, even if you have to kill him. Please.”

Rey turns the full force of her gaze back to him, but her body is still leaning toward Finn, as if using him as evidence. “You care about him?” Rey asks, shock lacing through her voice.

“Not about him,” Poe says honestly. His head is still overturned and cramping from what Ren has done to him. “If I had the chance, I’d kill him. And I wouldn’t regret it.”

“Then why would you ask this of me?”

“For the General,” Poe says. “She’s lost enough already. I don’t want her to lose him, too.”

“You don’t think she’s lost him already?” Rey asks.

“There’s a difference between mourning someone and knowing for certain that they’re dead,” Poe says. “I just want to make sure that when the day comes for you to kill Kylo Ren, the General can live with how it all ended.”

Rey nods then, eyes piercing through him again. “You’re wiser than I thought you’d be, Poe Dameron,” she says. Full name and everything. 

She pulls herself up off the chair, grabbing her satchel. “You can sit with him for awhile,” she says. “I believe I should talk to the General about arranging my transport to Ahch-To.”

“Where Luke is?” Poe clarifies.

“Yes, Poe,” Rey says. “Where Luke is.”

Poe nods. “Thank you,” he says.

Rey seems to hesitate for a moment, but she reaches out and grabs him on the shoulder. Likely an echo of greetings she’s seen between others on the base, and it’s a lovely gesture, but both of them gasp as a bolt of energy jolts through the both of them. All at once, Poe can feel the pure _potential_ of her, the power coursing through her if she’d only direct it correctly, and suddenly, Poe’s fingers are sparking against the bed frame. He jumps again, shrugging out of her grasp, and something crashes to the floor. The plastic chair. The plastic chair had been _floating_ in midair, and has fallen back onto the linoleum floor of the hospital.

“What,” Poe says, at the same time as Rey says, “You’ve got the Force?”

“No,” Poe says immediately, and then, “Well. The General says I’ve got a thing, and so does--”

He cuts himself off there, shuddering without meaning to. Rey stares at him. “A _thing?”_

“Not, like,” Poe wiggles his fingers. Rey’s eyebrows are pulled down over her eyes. It’s kind of intimidating. “I’m not. I couldn’t be a _Jedi,_ and. It’s new, and.” Poe takes a deep breath. “I got captured by Ren. He...discovered it, when trying to get information about the map.”

Rey presses her lips together, and then nods, only once. “Okay,” she says. She looks back at the chair, and at Finn, and then at Poe, considering. “When I touched you, I’d never--felt anything like that before,” she says. “It was like...I could feel something new, something _connecting,_ and I wanted to dig deeper into it.”

She levels him with another gaze. “You should come with me to Ahch-To,” she decides.

"What," Poe says again.

“Skywalker could help you and me,” Rey says, already nodding to herself. “And we could help each other, and I--”

She stops herself, but Poe thinks he knows how that was going to end, anyway. _I wouldn’t have to do it alone._

“I’ll think about it,” Poe settles on saying, even though he knows what his answer is. 

Someone’s got to stay on base, and lead his squadron on missions, and be there for Finn when he wakes up. And someone else has got to save the universe.

Such is the way of destiny, Poe supposes.

And besides, he could never give up flying that easily.

“Go talk to the General,” Poe says, and is careful not to pat her on the back as he sits himself down in the seat next to Finn’s bed. “It’s important that everyone moves fast around here. The sooner we can end this war, the better.”

***

Poe doesn’t really remember what happened when his mother died.

Obviously there was crying, and shouting, and a memorial service arranged and Poe had to wear starchy clothes that were uncomfortable and damp with sweat and tears by the time it all ended, and he’d held on so tight to his dad’s hand like it would help either of them at all.

But all of that doesn’t feel like anything, afterward. They’re facts that Poe can recite about the days, but Poe can’t pull back the potency of it all. How deep the loss went, how much hurt they’d all gone through.

What Poe _does_ remember is a mosaic made up of hours, days, weeks, and months after his mom died. All pushed together into a singular image in Poe’s mind: of him sitting beneath their Uneti, staring at the wildflowers his mom had always liked at the edge of the garden, and begging for it all to end well for everyone.

He didn’t ask for it to never have happened. Somehow, at eight, Poe had known that this was a kind of thing you could never wish away. Something so permanent and true that it towers above everyday life, becoming a monolithic event that defines you. 

Instead, he begged for the hurt to go away. For his dad to smile again, and for Poe to see other children with their mothers and not miss his, and for his own mother to be somewhere where he can find her again, if that was possible at all. 

Sometimes he whispered it like a prayer, a secret between him and the Uneti. Other times he’d just sit and think about it without words, just feel it through all his bones until it exhausted him. Sometimes he pressed his hands against the trunk of the tree and think about the empty seat at their dining room table, and how his dad never looked at it, not even once.

And the Uneti listened to him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao apparently i will only update this once a year.
> 
> so stick around til fucking 2025, i guess.
> 
> anyway how's life for u guys

The General finds Poe in the hangar two hours after Rey leaves for Ahch-To, and asks him, once again, to meet her in her quarters as soon as possible.

Snap wolf-whistles at Poe as he follows her out of the hanger, causing Poe to throw his oil rag in Snap’s face and for the General to gracefully roll her eyes.

“I’m not going to ground you, because we need all hands on deck at the moment,” she says as soon as she closes the door. She raises an eyebrow at him, and Poe shrugs, closing his mouth against all the possible protests he had thought of.

“However,” the General continues, “the connection you share with the Force is one that needs to be explored, both for your own safety and for the safety of everyone else on the base. Therefore, I would like you to begin joining me in some exercises to discover the nature of your relationship with the Force.”

Poe bites back a sigh, but it’s only because the General is looking right at him. He’d much rather work on his X-Wing, but he’s never been able to say no to Leia. Especially since she’s his superior officer. “Where do we start,” Poe says instead.

The General gestures him through a nearby doorway, where a bamboo mat spreads across the floor. Meshed, soundproofed screens hug the walls of the small room, and Poe’s ears feel for a moment as if they’ve been muffled by the immediate silence of it all. He rubs at the shells of his ears as the General toes off her shoes and slips past him, sitting cross-legged in the center of the room.

Poe pulls off his work boots and leaves them next to the General’s, and sits down carefully, facing the General. “Meditation?” He asks skeptically.

The General nods. “It’s helpful for everyone,” she says, “but for Force-sensitive people, and Jedi especially, it facilitates a deeper connection with the Force.”

“So…how do you  _ do  _ it?” Poe asks. It’s not like he’s ever explored anything like this before. Even when he played with other kids, he was always the warrior pilot that carried a blaster, while other kids wanted to be the Jedi.

The General indulges him with a small smile. “Close your eyes,” she says gently, and Poe does. “Focus on your breath...what you feel and hear around you...don’t force yourself to clear your mind, but it let it go where it wants to…”

***

Poe looks up, and he sees the Uneti tree from his childhood.

It’s taller than it had been when he’d last seen it years and years ago. Now it stretches upward and outward, like the tree is trying to touch all of Yavin IV. In the distance, Poe can hear birds chirping, wind scratching against leaves and trees, even his father, whistling off-key through an open window in the living room. He can feel the healthy, dark soil between his toes as his feet sink into the earth, and he can feel the steady sunshine of Yavin IV’s three nearby stars.

Poe takes in a deep breath, and when he exhales, he feels a peculiar ache as he lets his spine settle down into his back. It’s not bad, but it fills all the hollows in his joints. 

Relaxation, Poe realizes. Every part of him feels at ease, and it’s been so long that his body misses all the tension, in a way.

There’s a sweet warmth as well that Poe distantly recognizes. It hums through the air, and Poe isn’t sure whether it emanates from the Uneti, or it simply surrounds it. 

Poe steps up closer to the Uneti and presses his hands and forehead into the trunk, breathing in the scent of tree sap and ozone.

The Uneti seems to broaden under his fingertips, then, seems to pull up and out under his touch, and he realizes then that it is the same within his mind. He can feel new space created in him, as if he himself is stretching to match the boughs of the tree.

And suddenly, he feels it.

The push and pull of everything, like tides ever expanding and recessing. How it touches everything, but some more than others, like how sunlight brushes against wood and stone but catches on glass and metal. A Force that’s unstoppable and everywhere, pulled through the fabric of galaxies like tree roots pull through soil. It breathes in and out with Poe, seems to expand within him, and Poe can see it all, the lightness and darkness of it, how it scatters shadows in people and worlds and solar systems even as it illuminates others.

Poe doesn’t even know what to think of it. He’d call it beautiful, except it’s just something that  _ is, _ just the passing of time  _ is. _ But it’s something he’d never seen, not really, and so maybe it’s beautiful because Poe gets to see something like this for the first time ever, gets to feel the breadth and depth of the universe and its power.

He stays like that for what seems like ages and seconds, pressed against the tree and monitoring the pulses of the Force as it flows through Yavin IV and beyond it.

***

“Come back to me now, Poe,” the General is repeating slowly, gently, and Poe opens his eyes slowly. Everything around him is hazy, a monotone grey color, and then it coalesces into the meditation room again. General Organa is looking at him, professional as ever but with a hint of curiosity at the corners of her expression.

Poe feels unfairly exhausted. He can feel it tugging at his eyes and mouth, and even his bones feel sore. His knees twinge from sitting cross-legged for so long. Poe says, “How long was that?”

“Three hours and twenty-seven minutes,” the General says. “Even Luke usually gives up meditation before you did. I got some caf and had two meetings and when I came back, you were still here.”

“I don’t think it was meditation,” Poe says, rubbing at his eyes. “I think the tree wanted to show me...something.”  _ The mystery and wonder of the universe  _ is what he meant to say, but that sounds ridiculous, no matter how true it is.

The General raises her eyebrows. “What tree?”

“The one in my backyard,” Poe says, before realizing how nonsensical that probably sounded. He’s so fucking tired, and all he’d done was sit and close his eyes for a few hours. He stretches out his legs, trying to massage away the knots that have gathered in his calves and kneecaps. “The one that Luke gave my mom, on Yavin IV,” Poe explains.

“What did you see?” the General asks, leaning forward.

“It was like I was  _ on _ Yavin IV,” Poe says. “Physically. It was--I could feel the air and the ground, and I could hear everything, and I was looking at the Uneti. And I touched it, and it showed me...I think it showed me what it feels. The Force, and...everything, and…” Poe takes a deep breath, and in the silence that follows, he suddenly feels it again. The buzz in the air and the warmth of it, the added air pressure to the room. “I can feel it more, now,” Poe realizes.

And when he looks back at the General, really looks at her, her eyes flash with it too, and he says, “I can see it in you, General.”

General Organa leans back, eyes twinkling as she looks at Poe closely. “May I?” she asks, reaching out a hand. Poe reaches out and grabs her hand automatically.

There’s not the shock that he had with Rey. No feeling of electricity or adrenaline, but Leia held power in the Force all the same, strong and unyielding. She feels like an earthquake, or like a mountain rising strong and proud into the sky.

General Organa lets go first, and Poe’s glad to find that there aren’t any objects floating around them, no cracks in the walls or ceiling that hadn’t been there before. Poe smiles without meaning to, unconsciously matching the General’s peaceful smile as she gets to her feet.

“You have a deep, true connection to the Force, Poe,” the General says. Poe rolls his ankles and stands up as well, making sure to maintain eye contact with her. The Force still flashes in her eyes, bright and sweet. 

“I can’t use it, though,” Poe says, and he knows this for some reason, knows it like he knows his own name. “Not like Rey or Luke or even you can.”

The General tilts her head to the side. “Maybe not,” she says, “but when I held your hand, I felt so connected to the Force. It was...incredible,” she says, and suddenly her eyes light up, and she snaps her fingers. “Like the Uneti tree,” she says, suddenly. “I touched it once, and it felt a lot like that. And you grew up around it, as well. I bet that’s what this is. Would you like some tea?”

She heads out of the meditation room, probably to make tea with her banged-up kettle, but Poe only blinks, still standing on the bamboo mat.

“Are you saying I’m a tree? Just to be clear,” Poe calls out to her, squinting his eyes.

“I’m saying you’re  _ like  _ a tree,” General Organa says, poking her head back in the room. “Follow along, and don’t be slow, I’ve got another council session in about an hour. Tea, or no?”

“I’m a  _ tree, _ ” Poe repeats, as he pulls on his shoes and follows her into the main quarters.

“A very special tree,” the General says, and oh, she’s just taking the piss out of him now. “I bet if you concentrated hard enough, you could photosynthesize.”

“Can I take some leave? I gotta go fucking soak up sunlight and get watered, apparently,” Poe says, and the General snorts.

A  _ tree. _ He’s apparently a fucking  _ Force-sensitive tree. _

***

According to the General’s limited knowledge about the Uneti trees (which, to be fair, is still more than almost anyone would know on the matter), they are semi-sentient trees that can connect to the Force, presumably for aid in growth, development, and protection of themselves.

“My mom once said that the trees worked as conduits for the Force,” Poe says, and the General nods.

“The Uneti build strong connections to the Force, especially as they grow. Even touching an Uneti can demonstrate to a Force-sensitive person the true nature of the Force.” The General gives Poe a significant look. “Something that I felt when I held your hand, Poe.”

“Yeah, you did say I’m an Uneti tree,” Poe says, flexing his hands around his mug of tea. “But I’m not--I don’t...that doesn’t make sense.”

It doesn’t make sense for a  _ lot  _ of reasons. Including, but not limited to: the fact that he’s a human being, and a pilot for the Resistance, and none of his family is Force-sensitive, and he’s been fine to live that way for all of his life. It’s not like he’s mystical, or even close to anything like that. Hell, he doesn’t even like the ground, likes flying in the air way better, unrooted and untethered from everything. That doesn’t sound very fucking tree-like to Poe.

“Yes, it is strange,” General Organa says. “And I can’t say I’ve ever heard of your connection to the Force in a sapient being, or to be frank, anything that  _ wasn’t  _ an Uneti tree. But the fact of the matter remains that you hold this connection, and furthermore, I think you’ve displayed abilities similar to that of the Uneti. I am not here to push,” the General says, “and you do not have to share anything that you don’t wish to, but by what I can tell, your mind has healed remarkably quickly from Kylo Ren’s invasion.”

Poe jerks back, because it’s not like he’s fucking thriving, here. In the days after destroying the Starkiller (and it has only been a few days, barely a week, even though Poe feels like that’s too little and too much time for all these things to have taken place), Poe hasn’t been able to sleep well, always waking up screaming like Ren’s clawed hand is still in his mind, tossing around memories and wringing Poe out from the inside. He keeps flinching at little things, and his hands keep shaking and his heart sits up too high in his chest and his squadron don’t ask how he’s doing, because they know how much he hates that, but he’s gotten a lot more invitations to grab meals and a lot more bottles of alcohol and sleeping pills than he usually does.

But then again--if Poe really thinks about it. He remembers sitting with the General just last week (Gods, had it really been last week?) and feeling cracked open. Like all of him was a splintered bone, dripping out marrow. Feeling hollowed out and punched through, and his nerves fraying as he wondered if he’d ever feel the same again.

And, well. It’s not as if the memories of Ren are gone, because that won’t ever disappear. It’s permanently embedded in him, a scar that slashes right through the very core of him. But--the hollowness is gone. He doesn’t feel twisted at all anymore, he doesn’t feel the throbbing, pulsing hurt of it all. He’s no longer broken apart.

“You’re right, General,” Poe says, a frown line digging its way into his forehead as he thinks about it.

“The torture that Ren used on you is a dark side technique,” the General explains to him, tracing her finger aimlessly along the dining room table. Probably to keep herself from digging her nails into her hands. “People without any connection to the Force struggle to recover from that, and often need assistance from Force-sensitive people. The damage that it inflicts on people is--terrible, to say the least. I could feel the effects of the damage he’d done in the Force when you first reported to me, Dameron. I was going to offer my services, but I suppose we all got side-tracked. The fact that you don’t need it anymore, however, is notable.”

“So you think I, what,” Poe says, “Force-healed myself? How could I do that if I wasn’t even  _ thinking  _ about it?”

“Uneti trees, when they incur damage or sickness, can use the Force to regenerate quickly,” the General says. “The Jedi used to study the trees to actually learn Force-healing. If your connection to the Force is similar to that of the Uneti tree, then an ability to heal yourself quickly, especially from injuries that pertain to the Force, is not far-fetched.”

“So I’m invincible and a power outlet for Jedi,” Poe surmises, sitting back in his chair.

“I mean, if you’d like to look at it pessimistically,” the General says. “I wouldn’t say you’re invincible by any means, though. Just a fast healer.”

Poe runs a hand through his hair, takes a deep breath. “So...where does that leave me? Is there--what do I  _ do  _ with all of this?”

As if on cue, and just to fuck with him, a loud alarm starts shouting from an abandoned datapad on the kitchenette counter. General Organa sighs, and checks her watch.

“I’m afraid I’m late for my council meeting,” she says, picking up her mug of cold tea and pouring it down the sink. “How would you feel about making this a weekly thing? When you’re not on missions, of course,” the General says. “I won’t force you, but I think that exploring this further could be beneficial.”

Poe nods, standing up as well. “I should get back to my squadron,” he says. “Make sure that Snap hasn’t blown up anything while I’ve been gone.”

General Organa cracks a slight smile, gone too quickly. “Godspeed, Commander Dameron.”

***

Finn still isn’t awake.

It’s not as if he  _ should  _ be, though. Even with the help of bacta, the lightsaber attack was brutal. By all accounts, he’s lucky to be alive.

It’s just--

Poe really  _ wants  _ him to be awake, is all.

Poe doesn’t even know him that well. Or maybe, more accurately, Finn doesn’t know  _ Poe  _ that well.

From everything Poe’s seen, the tidbits that the General and Rey had given him and the tall tales spun by the rest of the base, Finn is brave, and independent. He’s smart as a whip, and he’s loyal. He’d taken Poe’s jacket to remember him by, had finished Poe’s mission, had  _ saved  _ Poe in the first place, and he’d gone back to Rey as well. For fuck’s sake, he’d taken a lightsaber to the back from Kylo  _ Ren  _ in a poorly calculated gambit to save Rey.

And Finn probably thinks--

Well. Poe doesn’t know  _ what  _ Finn thinks of him. Maybe he doesn’t think of Poe at all. Maybe it’s all Rey for him, and that would make a lot of sense, because Rey is a big fucking deal and Poe may have piloted them out of the Finalizer, but Rey’s the one that really, truly got him to safety. Hell, she’s the one that’s working toward getting  _ the galaxy  _ to safety.

There are parts to play here, is Poe’s point. A destiny that’s getting carried out, and one that involves Finn even if he’s strapped to a hospital bed right now. 

And Finn’s tied to Rey, that’s for sure. They know each other like Poe doesn’t, and they care for each other even if it hasn’t been all that long. Poe can almost feel it, how they’re both meant to do something important, and that important thing is something that they’ll do together.

And Poe, well. 

He’s just a fucking tree that wants Finn to  _ wake up,  _ because despite all of that, despite everything he thinks he knows and doesn’t know--he still feels like he needs Finn, and needs Finn awake  _ now. _

He doesn’t have a lot of time to spend with Finn, because he’s a commander and a force-sensitive-whatever now, so his days get eaten up by meetings and more meetings with a few missions stuck in between and meditation when he can get it. He spends so much time in General Organa’s quarters now, it’s turned from a somewhat-joke to a maybe-serious rumor that he and the General are sleeping together. He doesn’t grace them with a response, even when Snap and Jess wiggle their eyebrows and ask tongue-in-cheek questions about it all, because the truth is weird. And something he hasn’t exactly shared yet. With anyone.

It’s just--the problem is that it feels useless. It’s not something he needs, something he even wanted. All he’d ever wanted to be was a pilot and a soldier, and that’s who he is and what he does and that’s fine enough with him. But this thing--this stupid thing, all it’s doing is making him feel different and separate from everyone else. Finn and Rey have their own thing to do together, and Jess and Snap and Kare and everyone else are part of the squadron or even the base. 

But now Poe’s a fucking Uneti tree, whatever that’s supposed to fucking mean, and all it does is make him feel the hum of the earth and the world around him when he’s supposed to be focusing on flying, and he can’t even do shit with it, just be one with the universe or whatever the fuck. The General would never describe something as a “gift,” but she probably views it as that, and Poe’s never been one for a gift that has no use. All it’s doing is pulling him away from everyone else.

Except Finn. 

Even if Finn’s still in a medically-induced coma, even if Poe’s so busy it’s almost like he can’t do anything--right now, Finn feels right. Poe feels right around him, even if he’s Rey’s. Rey isn’t here right now, and Poe’s too busy and too tree-like to ever really  _ be  _ anyone’s, or for anyone to belong to him, but Finn feels good to him, feels like a magnet drawing Poe closer, and so Poe would really like Finn to  _ fucking wake up right now, _ because Poe really just needs something that’s his right now, even if Finn really isn’t.

***

In the two weeks since he’s begun haphazardly meditating whenever his ever-shifting schedule allows, he’s only spent time with the Uneti tree in his backyard. 

It’s been somewhat peaceful, a nice respite in the mess of everything since the Starkiller. He always sees the tree, its golden bark and wandering limbs, and sometimes he catches a glimpse of his dad’s salt-and-pepper hair or the smell of the eucalyptus aftershave he uses, and then Poe presses his hands and forehead against the tree and it seems to match pulse with him, hum and breathe with the power of the Force knotted between the two of them.

This time, though.

This time is different.

Poe isn’t even sure if it’s meditation, or if he’s somehow slipped into another one of his nightmares.

When he presses his hands into the bark of the Uneti tree, there’s the enveloping warmth of the Force, but there’s something else. Something heavier, something deeper, something disgustingly familiar, hot and bubbling, and it almost screams at him to  _ pay attention. _

When Poe opens his eyes, and it’s the black, greasy hair of Kylo fucking Ren right in front of him, maybe a distance of two feet between them.

Poe yelps and scrambles back immediately, feeling his back hit against the hard metal walls of Ren’s quarters. Because that’s where he is, evidently. Ren is sitting on a sparse bed, the covers and pillows bunched up tight at the top, expertly made in the way that only a military soldier can do it. He’s sitting hunched over at the very edge of the bed, knees bent at a perfect ninety degree angle, his feet pressed tight together. He’s got his elbows on his knees, and his eyes are shut tight enough to squeeze at the skin around his eyes. His stupid, greasy long hair hangs down in strings in front of him.

“What the  _ fuck, _ ” Poe says, and then, “Why the  _ hell _ am I here, Ren?”

But there’s no response.

“Hello?” Poe says, and even pokes a finger into Ren’s shoulder. 

He stays exactly where he is, but a low moan escapes out of his mouth. Poe wrinkles his nose and steps back, and takes several deep breaths.

When he's calmed himself down enough (and sure, his heart is still racing, but it's not thready or threatening to burst away from his chest, now), there’s a few things he figures:

First, Ren didn’t channel him. Because if he had, he’d see Poe’s--Force ghost, or astral projection or whatever-the-fuck. 

(He isn’t sure what it is and Leia isn’t, either, because as she puts it, “Uneti trees have never had souls before, so it’s probably some weird hybrid thing.” As far as wise Force-mentors go, she’s awfully blasé about the whole thing.)

So, if Ren didn’t channel him, then what Poe had felt when he touched the Uneti tree was a massive disturbance in the Force. Must’ve been, to pull him all the way here from his normal meditation space in his backyard.

Which brings Poe back to, essentially, his original question: What the  _ fuck  _ was going on?

As if to answer his question, Ren suddenly opens his eyes and says, “ _ Stop, _ I don’t want--why--what purpose will this _serve--?_ ”

And his eyes.

God, his eyes.

Poe actually stumbles back a few steps, up to the wall, and shudders involuntarily.

His eyes are wrong.

Well, they usually are, all cold and dark and prodding, but Poe swears that they’ve turned a garish shade of yellow, and his entire being seems to crackle with an ugly, bright kind of lightning, cold and electric at the same time.

Ren shakes his head and grips at his skull with clawed hands, and screams, “Get  _ out  _ of my head!” and his irises flicker back to their normal color. Something wispy and dark, like smoke, drifts out of his ears, but filters its way back into his mouth again.

“My father…” Ren moans, pulling his knees up to his chest. “You killed my father.”

“What the fuck is going on,” Poe breathes out, and drifts forward a few steps to look closer.

And as he does, two things happen at once:

Ren’s eyes bubble back up with that sickly, jaundiced yellow color, and he jerks his head up to stare straight at Poe, mouth curling into a horrendous sort of smile.

And something jerks awake in the Force. 

That  _ something  _ is much better than this. Instead of a burning heat, it's cooler and smells like cinnamon.

It moves like the wind, and it brushes up against Poe, so powerful it pulls him away from Ren’s mental breakdown and back all the way to the General’s meditation room, asking him to open his eyelids with a gentle stroke across his face.

***

Poe looks at the General, who’s staring right back at him from the doorway of the meditation room, and they say at the same time, “Finn’s awake.”

The General tilts her head. “And how do  _ you  _ know that?” she asks. “I only just got word from Dr. Milton.”

Poe swallows, and says, “He’s got the Force. Pretty strong, too. Strong enough to--ah, to wake me.”

Poe internally frowns to himself. He’d almost mentioned the strange vision, with Ren who somehow wasn’t Ren at all. 

And he should probably mention it to the General, anyway. A disturbance that big, pulsing like a wound and powerful enough to pull Poe from his usual meditation spot--that’s something to be concerned about. It means that Ren, or whatever Ren’s working with, is incredibly powerful, perhaps gaining more power. 

But. It’s Ren, and the General is the General.

And besides, it’s not like he’d gotten any hard, actionable intel anyway. 

It’s better that he waits and sees.

Poe gets to his feet, and says, “Is it okay if I--if I go and see him?”

“I doubt whatever I say will make any difference,” the General says, smiling and shooing him with a hand. “Go. And when he feels up to it, tell him I have to talk to him. I swear, everyone’s Force-sensitive these days.”

“Thanks,” Poe says, and, after a moment’s hesitation, leans in to kiss her cheek before making a beeline to the door.

“That’s hardly appropriate, Commander!” he hears her call from behind, but he can hear the smile in her voice anyway. 

Poe finds himself matching that smile as he quickens his pace, nearly breaking out in a jog in his haste to get down to the med bay. 

And his thoughts were so full of Finn that, by the time he reaches the sliding doors marked as “MED BAY” with peeling letters, he forgets all about Ren and the strange yellow eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Black Lives Matter. Here's a [link](https://blacklivesmatter.com/) to donate. Please do, if you have the means.
> 
> Remember to wash your hands, socially distance, and treat people with kindness. 
> 
> If you liked this, please check out my [twitter](https://twitter.com/allierowell2/). Promise I'm nicer on there than I am on here, haha.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please check out my [website](https://muldoonstories.com/) for more stories. Also, I just made a [twitter](https://twitter.com/allierowell2/). Cards on the table, it's under a pseudonym because I'm a weirdo, but please talk to me on there ! Promise I'm nicer on there than I am on here, haha.


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